Silent Voice
by T-oftheSand
Summary: It was miraculous to her - and almost frightening - to realize that if she had not made that simple (and somewhat foolish) decision to wait, she likely would not be where she was right now. She would never have met her husband in the stadium, and she never would have made the friends that she had now. She closed her eyes and smiled again, something that was once very rare from her.
Hey, everyone.

So, well…I went on a multiple-month hiatus, as you can see. Quite a bit happened, including a move and a university transfer among other major adjustments, and unfortunately this was forced to take a backseat for a while.

Today, though, I realized it was kind of time to get back into this, and it was appropriate considering I had come up with what I think to be a pretty good idea. (Updating PTSD is likely next…I PROMISE I will be continuing that!)

This topic is quite a personal one for me at the moment as well as being a pretty relevant point concerning Temari's eventual role in the series, as we see it in the epilogue. After watching some very early episodes not too long ago, I couldn't help but notice a statement that Kankuro had made - apparently Temari had waited to take her chunin exam, and had postponed it by about a year.

This got me thinking and it was a little interesting to realize what that meant. If Temari had not waited, she would not have gone to Konoha at that time and therefore would not have met her future friends as well as her future husband. Essentially, the course of the series could (possibly would) have been dramatically different. Now, no one really knows why exactly Temari decided to wait for sure, but I took it upon myself to work it out in this story. It was a good one to write for me right now, as her thinking can be somewhat comparable to what mine is right now…at this moment, I'm dealing with a lot. There's not much that can be sugarcoated here, really - I had a very complicated and difficult early life (much like Temari did…I think that may be why I relate to her so much), and some of these issues continue to affect me to this day, even now, at age 20. But coming to think of these things differently can actually be helpful, and I'm finding that it can help people to heal.

So, yeah. I sort of combined an interesting series detail with some qualities of my current situation. WOOT to getting personal! :D

Also, please keep in mind that this story as it is right now is essentially a sketch. It will likely get updated because it definitely isn't perfect. If you guys see something that could be improved totally let me in on it and I'll take a look. For now though, it was just to get me back into some writing, and to get this idea down when it was fresh.

-Allie

I do not own Naruto.

* * *

Silent Voice

* * *

She'd always been a person of reason, of logic - she was a person who normally wouldn't be caught dead searching for answers anywhere beyond what she could see.

But as she laid awake late that night, her middle protruding and her nostalgic mind wandering, she questioned things. She was seven months along now; one fateful day she had finally found herself in a position that, at one point, was nothing but a distant dream that she had told herself would exist only as that. And, not all that long before that, she never would have dreamed of _actually_ _dreaming_ that this would be where she wound up.

Needless to say, though…she _had_ dreamed about it, and she eventually did wind up there.

 _…_ _Here_. It no longer made sense to refer to her situation as _there_ …it was by no means distant. Even though she had doubted that this would ever truly work out for her - for _them_ \- even as she was in the process of planning her move to Konoha, it was definitely not possible to say that it wasn't guaranteed now. Because she was there, in the middle of it. She was almost disappointed that it took her as long as it did to realize that she was actually living what she found herself dreaming of several years ago.

She found herself realizing that if she had been so sure of herself all those years ago, so sure that it wouldn't happen, and still wound up being _this_ wrong, it was probably foolish of her to keep herself so confined to her typical mindset. A smile crept across her face as she placed her hand on her large midriff. Her other hand was being held by her husband, someone she hadn't been able to stand when they had first met. Her smile grew as she turned her head to look at him.

 _I have gone from hating you to carrying your - our - son._

The moon gave the light coming through their bedroom windows a blue tint, a purer tone than what she had seen for years in Suna. It was cooler, more peaceful. Only good things had happened for her while here.

It had been nine years now.

 _Was that really all it took?_

She shook her head slightly - she was definitely nostalgic tonight. She looked down at her still-growing belly again. She got butterflies knowing that inside her grew the legacy of not only her and Shikamaru, but of the entire village of Konoha as well. The happiness inside her continued to bloom as she thought of this further. Closing her eyes and reveling in the bliss, she realized that she had achieved a much less specific goal in this new life of hers as well.

Growing up in Suna under her circumstances didn't exactly make for a happy life for her first sixteen years. She couldn't sugarcoat it…by age fourteen she had been morphed into a miserable, crabby bitch. In her own defense, it had happened out of self-preservation…if she didn't kill people with her attitude first and foremost, things would have turned out much worse.

At least, that was what she had thought before, and that was ten years ago…

 _Ten years…_

Her mind continued to travel. At that point, she had been out of Suna's academy for roughly two years. Being the village's strongest genin at the time, as well as the most innovative and creative (Suna hadn't seen a young wind user with the same amount of potential in years), plans were being made for her to take the chunin exam. She didn't need much more preparation - the council was pushing for her to just take it that year, and it seemed to make sense to her. The exam was held in Suna, on her home turf, that time around, and if she waited the extra year she would be traveling to a foreign area…even with the extra year of training under her belt, it still may not arm her as well against new soil.

She knew it, and she remembered knowing it. But she smiled again, knowing that listening to the council _bitch_ and _moan_ (it was annoying, really…she smirked at the memory) about her decision to wait and standing unaffected was the single best thing she had ever done.

Thinking back on it, she really couldn't really say what made her wait…the reasoning to take it that year was much stronger, and it fell fully in her and her village's favor. In any other situation, she would have chosen to take it that year, and had anyone else been in her situation, they likely would have done the same.

She looked down at the bulge beneath her nightclothes once again, and looked over at Shikamaru once again.

 _Coincidence…_

The word used to float around her head frequently. It was essentially a gap-filler for her. As she understood it, some people had their respective religions, their own beliefs, things that they took comfort in to help them make sense of their world and how things worked. She, well…she never considered herself religious. It just wasn't for her.

 _I am a person of reason, of logic…_

So if anything happened that she couldn't explain, she would frequently say it was merely a coincidence.

Because to her, it was true. Something just happened to appear related to something else because of proximity, timing…the like.

She looked back at the light coming through their bedroom windows.

Not many knew it, but that light meant far, far more to her than merely beams of moonlit glow coming through their glass. In Suna, things were…different. Everything down to the color of the moonlit light during the nighttime was duller, dustier…tainted. The red glow of the desert would tamper with the little light they had at that time, and over time she came to swear that it affected everything else, too. The people were included; largely those who respected her, feared her, but did not like her. Those who had never truly come to see her as one of their own.

She had only come to realize this until she came in touch with how things were in Konoha.

One of the first things she had ever noticed about this different, airy, _wonderful_ new place was that the color of the moonlight was different. Now, it came to hold the significance of it all.

In fact, it was the night that she first took time to notice this difference and looked outside to see how the light touched the trees, the many tall, great trees that she had only been able to see in dwarfed form in her greenhouses at home at the time, that she decided that she really liked this place.

She was sixteen then, largely still crabby, still bitchy. She knows she didn't really begin to warm up to much of her current friends until she was about 20 or so. She does not like change, and never has; that she knew. But this change snuck inside of her, and it changed _her_ …

At one point, a point not all that long ago, she never would have been caught dead thinking that it may even be possible that she would one day be married with a family plan. At that point, "ordinary" did not interest her. She decided that, as with everything else, things happen slowly, in order, with time.

It was miraculous to her - and almost frightening - to realize that if she had not made that simple (and somewhat foolish) decision to wait, she likely would not be where she was right now. She would never have met her husband in her delayed chunin exam, and she never would have made the friends - the support systems, something she had never really had - that she had now.

Yes, she had been proven wrong time and again. Because ordinary proved to be the silent voice that was screaming inside her for years, the voice that tried telling her that she wasn't really satisfied.

She smiled again, something that had once been quite rare for her. She had no choice but to wonder if this silent voice was what told her to wait for her exams.

Konoha and its people changed her life, and tears filled her eyes as she thought of what would have become of her had she not waited. _I certainly wouldn't be here now…_

She looked back up at the blue moonlight, and followed it to her husband's face. She couldn't believe that at one point she had hated him. Smiling yet again, she rose from their bed and made her way to their window and peered outside, bathed in the blue moonlight, just as she had years ago.

The idea of coincidence faded.

 _No. I can't limit myself anymore._

 _END_


End file.
